Anselm Reyle
Fires of Creations
Artist
Anselm Reyle
(1970, Tübingen), German
Original Title
Fires of Creations
Date2018
Mediumglazed ceramics and mirror plinth
Dimensions165 × 82,5 cm
Classifications
sculpture
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
Image Copyright
Photo by Studio Reyle
DescriptionAnselm Reyle is a German artist whose practice builds the legacies of modernism. Critiquing modernist tendencies, Reyle’s analytical approach redefines and recontextualizes established conventions. Although he is primarily a painter, his work transcends the conventions of traditional painting, instead following principles of painting without painting and the subversive practice of the readymade. Since the late 1990s, Reyle has been creating sizeable abstract paintings, sculptures, and installations in eye-catching neon colors. The surfaces of these pieces are formed by reflective foils, mirrors, glass, neon pipes, wrinkled metal, and varnished found objects which he removes from their typical contexts and meanings. Reyle often reworks iconic modernist motifs, placing them in new contexts and thus disrupting established art-historic cliches. His incorporation of unconventional materials conjures a highly curated, glamorous aesthetic which is provocative in its clear link to the world of consumerism, consequently producing ambivalent reactions. The use of these atypical materials evidences a rejection of academic traditions and simultaneously thematizes the aesthetic recycling of found objects. By drawing on the tradition of the readymade and diverging from the subjective painterly process, Reyle highlights ways in which the aesthetic conventions of Western modernism, linked to an adulation of the original work and the cult of the autonomous creative genius, can function as deeply reactionary forces in the contemporary landscape of art. His critique of painting examines the ever-changing criteria by which artworks are judged. Reyle constantly explores abstraction and its role in contemporary painting. His approach, rather than merely adopting an analytic distance, is also rooted in a fascination with found objects and the question of the death of modernism. Reyle’s works do not adhere to a strict geometric order, and their materiality and often dissonant colors help them elicit powerful emotional reactions while dancing on the boundary between content and emptiness.
Fires of Creations (2018) is a monumental vase placed on a reflective pedestal, thus ridding it of its traditional utilitarian function. The vase was hand-made in the fat lava style associated with the brightly colored pottery mass-produced in West Germany between the 1950s and 1970s. During this era, mass production was still linked to the democratic desire for universal accessibility, resulting in simplified forms appropriate for mass purposes. Conversely, Reyle’s vase was created in collaboration with traditional workshops and its unusual dimensions required sophisticated crafting techniques. Reyle questions the separation of applied art from high art while also spotlighting the ancient alchemistic dimension of pottery in which the process of burning evokes an alluring mysticism immeasurably distant from modernist rationalization.
Anselm Reyle (*1970, Tübingen) studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart and subsequently at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe. In 1997, he moved to Berlin, where he began to collaborate with artists such as John Bock, Dieter Detzner, Berta Fischer, and Michel Majerus. Reyle was also a visiting lecturer at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe, Berlin, and Hamburg. Since 2009, he is a professor in the Drawing and Painting Studio at the Hochschule für Bildenden Künste Hamburg. Reyle has had numerous solo exhibitions including a show at Kunsthalle Zürich. He has partaken in several international group exhibitions at institutions such as the Tate Modern in London and the Palazzo Grassi in Venice.
Fires of Creations (2018) is a monumental vase placed on a reflective pedestal, thus ridding it of its traditional utilitarian function. The vase was hand-made in the fat lava style associated with the brightly colored pottery mass-produced in West Germany between the 1950s and 1970s. During this era, mass production was still linked to the democratic desire for universal accessibility, resulting in simplified forms appropriate for mass purposes. Conversely, Reyle’s vase was created in collaboration with traditional workshops and its unusual dimensions required sophisticated crafting techniques. Reyle questions the separation of applied art from high art while also spotlighting the ancient alchemistic dimension of pottery in which the process of burning evokes an alluring mysticism immeasurably distant from modernist rationalization.
Anselm Reyle (*1970, Tübingen) studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart and subsequently at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe. In 1997, he moved to Berlin, where he began to collaborate with artists such as John Bock, Dieter Detzner, Berta Fischer, and Michel Majerus. Reyle was also a visiting lecturer at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe, Berlin, and Hamburg. Since 2009, he is a professor in the Drawing and Painting Studio at the Hochschule für Bildenden Künste Hamburg. Reyle has had numerous solo exhibitions including a show at Kunsthalle Zürich. He has partaken in several international group exhibitions at institutions such as the Tate Modern in London and the Palazzo Grassi in Venice.
